A Letter to the Mayor About Potholes

A LETTER TO THE MAYOR ABOUT POTHOLES

let it begin on the roadside / midmorning / snow slow / unfinished/ vehicle after vehicle / blowing horns / no / let it begin / my dear mayor it’s midnight on North Street / and my snow tires / collided / with the crumbling remains of earth / roads part of a postwar landscape / cracked / wounded / (can we have an amen) / not yet / let these words read back as litter on the side of the road / during an election year / vehicles ruptured grotesque / aching / passenger side tires stripped / in an abyss of spiderwebbed erosion / windlift the patchwork asphalt / trigger / the anger of the angry / how to avoid the holes / of night / snow fluttering / all directions / streetlight letting loose / like a child’s dream / it’s okay if it becomes concerned with infrastructure / but also a sort of swallowing / the goal is to engulf / as we all have been / at some point / engulfed / with some sort of pain / beating against us / from the inside out / outside in / it’s not any different / driving today / past neighbors / in this city / faces sinking / growling / charmed in the process of hurt

—NOAH FALCK

Noah Falck is a poet and education director at Just Buffalo Literary Center. He is the author of Snowmen Losing Weight (BatCat Press, 2012) and the upcoming Exclusions (Tupelo Press, 2020).